under the catagory of "now what"!

It seems that every time it looks like we have taken a step forward and I start to feel like this whole artist thing is working I get hammered with another "domestic" issue.

Two weeks ago we were in Kansas City where we had a great show, and actually made a little money on the deal. Last weekend's show was not so great, but something we could recover from since we had such a good show the week before.

Then there was yesterday.

When we go out of town there is always extra laundry to do, so I had been washing loads since Tuesday afternoon.

Yesterday after we had been out to pick up a few groceries, I went back downstairs to move another load out of the washer and into the dryer. When I went into the laundry room I discovered there was water everywhere.

At first I thought the washer had gone "belly up" --- I wish it had been that simple.

What was really going on was that water was running out of the top of the water heater.....not a good sign.

So after making 3 phone calls to find someone that could come right away and didn't want to charge me over $100 just to come and look, the repair man was on his way.

We now have a new water heater, a hugh mess still to be cleaned up, and a loan to my parents of over $1000....I had to call and ask them to put the cost on one of their credit cards.

So, I am once again feeling like a failure --- at my age I shouldn't have to ask mommy to rescue me at every turn.

So I will acknowledge that it could have been worse -- it could have happened on one of those weekends we were gone which would probably have flooded the entire basement, put out the pilot light and maybe blown the house up. As it is, there is a mess to clean up, but it will probably serve as prompting for me to just start getting rid of stuff.

I will also acknowledge that because of this I now know where the main water shut off for the house is, something I should have known 5 years ago.

But I'm wondering now just where I'm going on shows and art work. Its sort of like that poem about the horse shoe nail. Certainly there will be very little extra money out of our already stretched budget to pay for show fees. Without being able to pay show fees, I will have no shows to try to sell my stuff at. Without being able to sell my things, there will be no way to buy materials to make additional pieces, and really no point in doing them anyway.

Is there some lesson here? Is this simply suffering the natural consequences of having been too stupid to make good decisions in the past? Is this being punished for doing bad things?

Whatever it is, I obviously don't get it since I don't seem to be able to do anything to change it.....if it were just me I would throw away, give away and sell stuff, sell the house as quickly as possible and go live somewhere small that I wouldn't have to be responsible for....perhaps that's the problem---- I'm tired of always being responsible............

never mind